emotion, health, mental, brain, life, treatment, anxiety, alienation, brain pathways, love, happiness
I have to say that I believe in this very much. I went through very stressful situation at my old job. Being I had previously had aniety problem, I took the job knowing that I would not be subjected to too much stres and agrevation. Then I was placed at the worst site the company had, probably in the United States. Through it all I am proud of myself in a sensethat I lasted 7 months there. A long time considering others lasted only 2 or 3 months and were either fired or quit (or got transfered).
Being positive and believing in your own health can actually make you better, healthier and stronger than one would think you could be.
Here is a clip of the article and a link to the full text from MSNBC
SOURCE: MSNBC
Brain Check
Scientists are mapping the pathways that link emotion to health. The challenge for the rest of us is to put the discoveries to work
By Herbert Benson, M.D., Julie Corliss and Geoffrey Cowley
Newsweek
Sept. 27 issue - Imagine you're allergic to the oil of the Japanese lacquer tree—so allergic that the brush of a leaf against your skin provokes an angry rash. Strapping a blindfold over your eyes, a scientist tells you she's going to rub your right arm with lacquer leaf and your left arm with the innocuous leaf of a chestnut tree. The rubbing commences, and before long your right arm is covered with burning, itchy welts. Your left side feels fine. No surprise, until you learn that your left arm—not the right—is the one that got lacquered. Or imagine that Parkinson's disease has reduced your walk to a shuffle and left your hands too shaky to grasp a pencil. You enroll in a study and receive an experimental surgical treatment, which dramatically improves both your gait and your grip. You're ready to declare it a miracle of modern medicine, when you discover that the operation was a sham. The surgeons merely drilled a small hole in your skull and then patched it.
That thoughts and feelings can affect our health is hardly news. In the span of a few decades, mind-body medicine has evolved from heresy into something approaching cliche. So why is NEWSWEEK devoting this Health for Life report to the mind-body connection? Because the relationship between emotion and health is turning out to be more interesting, and more important, than most of us could have imagined. Viewed through the lens of 21st-century science, anxiety, alienation and hopelessness are not just feelings. Neither are love, serenity and optimism. All are physiological states that affect our health just as clearly as obesity or physical fitness. And the brain, as the source of such states, offers a potential gateway to countless other tissues and organs—from the heart and blood vessels to the gut and the immune system. The challenge is to map the pathways linking mental states to medical ones, and learn how to travel them at will....
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